Greek parliament head criticized over debt committee videos

April 7, 2015

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece’s radical leftwing head of parliament has been criticized by opposition parties for posting videos on the parliament’s website promoting her project to investigate the country’s crippling debt.

The 44-second videos end with the message “check it, erase it,” referring to the country’s 320 billion-euro ($350-billion) foreign debt. Parliament speaker Zoi Constantopoulou’s governing Syriza party won the Jan 25 elections promising to seek massive debt forgiveness, but has since agreed to honor its obligations to creditors.

Costas Karagounis, spokesman of opposition party New Democracy, accused Constantopoulou Tuesday of using the parliament as “a propaganda mechanism.”

Constantopoulou says her “Debt Truth Committee,” whose members include Zambian human rights law expert Cephas Lumina, will investigate how much of the debt is “illegal” with a view to writing it off.